Big Girls Cry
by stuart-little-luver
Summary: "Big girls cry when their hearts are breaking." Anna had never been good at goodbyes. Sendrick (Anna Kendrick/Brittany Snow)


"Here you are, ma'am," the waitress said, setting the still-steaming mug onto the table opposite the silverware.

"Thank you." Anna blew gently on her beverage, though she was in no real hurry to drink it- the Chai Tea Lattes they served there were unfortunately less than mediocre and always boiling hot. Anna mostly ordered them out of habit. She liked routine; she just wished she enjoyed the actual tea as much as she did the repetition.

The street just outside the coffee house was a swirl of umbrellas and darting rain. Adults wore their Nylon windbreakers while the children seemed more suited towards those ridiculous rain ponchos, which Anna was almost positive hadn't been in style since the '60s (But then again, she could be wrong. United States History had not been her strongest suit when she'd taken it in high school...far from it, actually). The sidewalks were wet and muddy, nothing like when Noah kissed Allie in the Notebook. Children were giggling as they splashed in each and every puddle, splattering the soiled water onto their pant legs. The grumpy group of adults stalking behind, Anna figured, was their parents.

"I was hoping you'd be here." Anna jumped, startled by the appearance of a new voice.

"Of course I'm here. I've come every other day of filming, haven't I?"

"No need to get mouthy with me. This was my first guess for where you would be, but my second was just as solid."

She raised her eyebrows. "And your second guess was..."

"Locked in your hotel room listening to Bangerz on repeat." Anna laughed, a loud, obnoxious, soul-slicing laugh that acquired half of the customers' attentions. A hand flew to her mouth just as the cackle deadened.

" _Shit,_ " she said, still laughing, but now switching to what her mother would call an "indoor laugh, Anna, love. Please settle down."

"I didn't see much of you after wrap. Are you avoiding me?" Brittany asked. Though her tone inferred she was teasing, the glint in her eye betrayed a different message entirely.

"Avoiding you? Britt, why would I be avoiding you?" Truth be told, she has been avoiding her, just a bit. Or maybe more than a bit. Anna had never been good at goodbyes: receiving, delivering; it was all the same, and she _sucked_ at it.

"I was just kidding, but it'd, y'know, be nice if we could spend at least a quarter of today, _our last day_ , together."

"Welp, Brittany, if you want to spend time with me so badly which, who can blame you- I am pretty awesome- you'll need to take a seat right here because my Chai is no where near as cold as it needs to be for me not to burn every part of my body."

Brittany laughed, and suddenly everything was okay again.

-x-

Though they'd had reruns of House playing for the past few hours, the show had become more of a background noise to the conversation taking place between the two.

"I'm going to miss this," Brittany said. After the two had finished Anna's Chai, they'd decided to hit up her hotel room for some quality television watching. It was a cute little room, the kind where they'd leave a mini chocolate on the pillow after maid service. The carpet was a sea foam green that Anna wasn't crazy about, but it meshed well with the gently patterned lamp shades on both of the bedside tables. Two queen sized mattresses were coordinated left to the origin, a dark green comforter draped over each. The couch they sat on was most likely a futon, or so it felt anyways.

"You wouldn't make a very handsome man," Anna giggled, trying to picture the woman in front of her with Five O'Clock Shadow.

"What? Are you kidding? I'd be a total hotshot," she said, "a womanizer."

"Huh...I guess I could see it." Anna leaned towards her and pinched her chin- dimpled and pale as a baby's bottom, between her thumb and pointer finger. "You have a very masculine face."

"Shut the fuck up. No, I don't."

"You so do. If we just did a little _fluffing_ on those eyebrows of yours, added some man-jaws to liven you up, outlined your eyes to make 'em _pop_ , and, obviously," Anna gently slid her finger across Brittany's closed lips, "gave those lips a detox, you'd be a little hottie." Brittany met her eyes with a laugh.

Fuck, she was going to miss her. Anna wanted to remember Brittany's every detail, every tiny feature and imperfection down to the bone. She wanted to commit her presence to memory, to be completely certain she'd never have to go a day without it.

And so she did, analyzing Brittany like her life depended on it. As she stared, their breath steadily fell into rhythm as if they were one being. Her body slowly drifted closer, Brittany's magnetic field tugging her near. The air around them had grown too hot and too thick. Heat bled through her cheeks and into her skull. Anna wasn't sure whether she was panicked or excited, her heart seizing in and out and up and down. Anna's lungs began to fail her in shallow, hiccup-y inhales. Her mouth was so dry her tongue stuck to the backs of her teeth.

 _Panicked,_ she decided.

Brittany met her gaze with a bold intensity, an almost daring certainty- something had made up her mind.

And then somewhere between Anna looking down and Brittany leaning forward, their lips met. The touch was innocent but explosive. Brittany's lips, Brittany's pretty pink lips, were kissing her own kind of chapped lips, and suddenly the moment was real. Anna pulled away slightly to catch her breath, her eyes making giddy contact with Brittany's. Before she could think, her eyelids were coming to a close.

This time, it was Anna who leaned in, sliding her lips into the little awe-like shape Brittany had left her. She pressed a shaky hand to Brittany's cheek, three years' worth of "just friends" slipping through her fingers like dust as her tongue met teeth. The kiss was a _kiss_ ; there was no turning back now. Everything was Brittany's strawberry shampoo, and it was all she could do not to collapse.

How long had she wanted this? How long had she wanted to kiss her best friend? To properly kiss her, sober and serious like she'd kiss a boy? What had shifted since the day they met? When had joking turned to hoping? Where had friendship stopped being enough?

Brittany released the kiss, blushing softly at the hand she had on Anna's thigh.

"I don't want to go home," Anna blurted. She wished she hadn't when Brittany took her hand back. Home meant reality. Home meant complications. Home meant Tyler. The warmth in the air only minutes before seemed to clear, leaving behind the hotel's shoddy AC.

"You and me, both. LA's a shithole," Brittany said, adding a fart noise for emphasis. Anna had just time to feel a tiny bit better before Brittany smiled at her, kindly, a grown up giving a kid a sweetie.

"So that-"

"Still think I'd make a bad man?" And there it was. Anna shrugged, forcing a laugh they both knew was fake.

"I bet Tyler would've gotten a kick out of that," Anna said. It came out sharp, and she tipped her head back to keep the tears from falling.

-x-

The flight home was, for the most part, silent. Anna kept to herself and read a book that was too similar to "Murder on the Orient Express" for her to really enjoy. Brittany sat next to her and nervously chewed on her bottom lip, taking an interest in her shoes as she scuffed them back and forth on the airplane's carpet.

"Friends can kiss, too," Brittany said after a while. Anna looked up from her book.

"Not like that they can't."

-x-

Tyler was waiting for Brittany at the gate when they landed. Even though she didn't look, Anna knew Brittany had run to hug him. She sped away in the direction of her flights' baggage claim.

The carousel went through three rotations before Anna finally spotted her suit case. She yanked it off the belt and turned towards the man holding a "Kendrick" sign. A hand gently grabbed her shoulder.

"Anna-"

"What?"

"I'm sorry."

"Don't be."

And then she left before she could cry.

Anna had never been good at goodbyes.


End file.
